JAMES CONEY: You don't become immune to con men just because you open a small business - Ofgem is dragging its feet again

I can only imagine the stress of running a small business. Not only do you have to ensure you’re making a profit, fight off competition from bigger rivals and earn yourself a living, but you’ve got the well-being of your employees to think about, too.

It must be all-consuming.

The anxiety and strain must grow still further when you move into new premises.

Targets: You do not become immune to con men just because you open a shop or other small business.

There are startlingly high business rates to pay as well as rent and the cost of refitting the store.

So it must almost be a relief to get a phone call from someone claiming to be an independent energy consultant who says they can cut your bill by thousands.

There are about 2,000 of these brokers in the UK — and though many are part of a trade association that has a voluntary code, many are unaccountable.

As a result, they can flog deals that not only aren’t the cheapest, but leave the customer tied into contracts they can’t escape.

When the customer complains, their case is routinely rejected.

On top of this, the broker can claim a commission, which rewards them for every unit of energy the business uses.

So, let’s go over that again: we’ve got an unregulated marketplace, vague terms and conditions, and vast commissions which keep being pocketed for doing absolutely nothing. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

There is a definite stigma against small businesses that complain about being signed up to bad deals.

Largely the view tends to be that, unlike ordinary consumers, business owners should know what they are doing. They should know the rules, scour contracts with a toothcomb and ask the right questions before signing up to a deal.

But run a small business in the UK today and you already have a mountain of red tape to cut through. It’s frankly staggering how little of that, though, is to protect the business owners themselves.

Small businesses are run by ordinary people. You don’t suddenly become immune to being fleeced by a sophisticated trick just because you open a hairdresser’s, an internet firm or a taxi business.

Typically, it is the energy firms that make business owners susceptible to these tactics by charging sky-high tariffs to those who move into new premises.

No wonder firms are so desperate to find a cheaper deal. And without a broker it is nigh on impossible for a business to find out what the best tariff is.

Once again, energy regulator Ofgem has proved slow to act on a scandalous state of affairs that is only making the energy firms richer.

Need a signal

You may not guess it from his weekly letters page, but Tony Hazell is a bit of a technology nerd. So when he heard the new iPhone 6 was coming out, he knew he had to have one.

Object of desire: You'll pay up to £900 over two years to nab Apple's latest.

He was straight on the internet on Friday morning when it went on sale. Despite his promptness, it’ll be almost a month before it arrives.

That was the easy bit, though – because then he had to find the right tariff.

My word, what a palaver. Hunting out a cheap mobile contract these days is only for the truly dedicated. It’s also not for the poor.

Over two years, one of these contracts will likely set you back upwards of £900. It took Tony hours to plough through the offers from all the providers.

This exercise in shopping around merely highlights the importance of stores such as Phones 4U, which went into administration this week. There is now only really one shop on the High Street that will compare phone deals for you — that’s Carphone Warehouse.

The phone providers effectively caused the collapse of Phones 4U by stopping it from selling their deals. That’s because they want to sell them themselves from their own shops.

This trend threatens to make it enormously difficult for us to shop around for the right phone deal. You would have to visit them all to find out what was the most expensive.

And with such a lot of money being spent on these tariffs, getting the wrong deal could prove to be a very expensive mistake.

Car-hire gripe

Without looking at the date I’d always be able to guess it was mid-September just by looking through Money Mail’s email basket. That’s because it’s the time when all the complaints about holiday car hire start flooding in.

Suddenly, odd payments are on your credit card bill. Or complaints you thought were straightforward have gone unanswered or have been rudely rejected.

The worst thing is many people shrug their shoulders and put the lost money down to an additional holiday cost.

That’s because they have nowhere to turn to get independent help. Isn’t it time this industry was brought to book?